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Their View: Like her or not, school chief Hanna Skandera deserves a confirmation hearing

By Milan Simonich / Texas-New Mexico Newspapers

Posted:
01/27/2013 01:00:00 AM MST

SANTA FE — The time is now for the state Senate to release Hanna Skandera from purgatory.

Senators on the Rules Committee need to give Skandera a confirmation hearing and an up or down recommendation on whether she should continue to run the Public Education Department. Once that is done, Skandera's nomination can be voted on by the full 42-member Senate.

Then she stays or goes, ending all the backroom debate and political intrigue about whether Gov. Susana Martinez's most controversial cabinet nominee should be thrown overboard.

Skandera, 39, has been secretary-designate of education for more than two years. Martinez nominated her for the $125,000-a-year job soon after being elected.

Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, dodged last week when I asked him if Skandera finally would get a hearing this winter before the Rules Committee, on which he serves.

"I don't know," said Sanchez, a man who knows just about everything about to happen inside the Capitol.

This is a case where Senate Democrats' credibility is as much at stake as Skandera's fitness for the job. No point is served in having a confirmation process for cabinet members if the controlling senators ignore a nominee year after year.

While the Senate has dawdled, Skandera has been grading public schools, disciplining an entire school board and advocating for a retention program for thousands of third-graders.

Criticisms of Skandera have been unrelenting.

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Here is the short list from her detractors:

She has never been a classroom teacher or a principal.

She has regurgitated failed programs from Florida, where she worked as a deputy commissioner of education under then-governor Jeb Bush.
She cannot explain the state's A-F grading system for its 830 public schools, even though it is the signature education program of Martinez's administration.

Defenders of Skandera, notably Martinez, call her a reformer who can shake up a moribund system.

In their view, it does not matter that Skandera has never stood in a classroom of 30 kids and worked every day to get the best from them. Vince Lombardi never played pro football but he could coach it like nobody before or since. Elena Kagan never tried a case before a jury, but President Obama put her on the Supreme Court because he said she was an exceptional talent.

But Skandera does not inspire that same sort of confidence.

Teachers question whether she understands what they do and what they are up against. Principals who climbed the ranks after years of work wonder if she has the knowledge necessary to help them improve their schools.

Skandera's resume contains lots of stops before New Mexico. She was CEO of Laying the Foundation, a training program for teachers in grades 6 through 12. She was executive vice president of Academic Partnerships of Dallas, an organization that helped universities devise online academic programs.

She served as deputy chief of staff to former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and undersecretary for education in California under then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

None of this impresses Democrats who control the Legislature.

"The problem with the governor and the secretary is that they are not educators," said state Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque.

Skandera and her management team have made their share of mistakes, some of them doozies.

One of her deputies, Paul Aguilar, told a legislative committee that the state's A-F grading system for schools was so convoluted that perhaps five people in New Mexico could understand it. In grading one Albuquerque school, Skandera's department gave it extra credit for providing sports programs. But the school, a specialized one for pregnant girls, offers no athletics. Skandera suspended the six-member school board in Questa, but many of her claims about its dysfunction were inaccurate or so old that they no longer were relevant.

Blunders, of course, are not limited to her department. Last year, the state prison system freed a man who had eight years left on his sentence.

But Gregg Marcantel, secretary of the Department of Corrections, is a straight shooter who readily admits any errors. Almost everyone who meets Marcantel believes he can do his job well. That is not true of Skandera.

Even so, she deserves a hearing before the Rules Committee, chaired by Democratic Sen. Linda Lopez of Albuquerque.

Lopez gave Marcantel a hearing less than three months after Martinez picked him to run the prison system. Lopez voted against him, but every other senator said Marcantel was a first-rate choice.

How would they vote on Skandera?

The Senate's 17 Republicans would rally behind her, mostly in deference to Martinez. But the 25 Democrats have the votes to confirm or reject her.
They need to step up this session and make the decision that frees Skandera from purgatory.

Milan Simonich, Santa Fe bureau chief of Texas-New Mexico Newspapers, can be reached at msimonich@tnmnp.com or (505) 820-6898. His blog is at nmcapitolreport.com.